Night After Night: Music from the Movies of M. Night Shyamalan celebrates one of the richest collaborations between a contemporary film director and a composer – an all-new recording of music for M. Night Shyamalan’s most acclaimed films by the Emmy®- and Grammy®-winning composer and nine-time Oscar® nominee James Newton Howard.
Included on Night After Night are highlights from Howard’s haunting scores that became part of the identity of eight of Shyamalan’s eerie, mind-bending thrillers – The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002), The Village (2004), Lady in the Water (2006), The Happening (2008), The Last Airbender (2010) and After Earth (2013).
For this album, James Newton Howard created eight suites that are piano centric and include new and original material. Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet performs throughout the recording. Violinist Hilary Hahn recreates her contributions to the soundtrack recording of the score for The Village, and cellist Maya Beiser reprises her performance of “An Event” from The Happening soundtrack. Gavin Greenaway conducts the orchestra and chorus in Howard’s new arrangements.
When Howard came onboard during the post-production phase to score The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan said he “felt potential and excitement” in their work together. In their mutual candor, each discovered a trusting creative partner in finding the right musical expression for Shyamalan’s supernatural thrillers.
“There wasn’t really a process in that,” the director remembered, in a recent conversation with Howard about how they began collaborating. “In retrospect, the ability to do a mixture of genres, I think, is the most important thing. That is the thing that interests me. There’s the thriller-and-scares part, and the adrenaline aspect, but there’s also an equally important emotionality. The composer has to have muscles in multiple areas, and he’s one of the rare, rare composers who can do all those things.”
“Night is an incredibly positive human being,” Howard said of Shyamalan, “He was unfailingly supportive when I would start to get nervous, or upset, or doubt what I was doing. And that is a huge thing.”
“Yeah, but it’s not artifice,” Shyamalan responded, “it’s genuinely coming from my belief in you.”
A major figure in the film and TV music world since he scored Pretty Woman in 1990, James Newton Howard has had seven of his scores nominated for the Academy Award, as well as receiving two nominations in the Best Song category. His credits include scores for The Prince of Tides, The Fugitive, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Shyamalan’s The Village, Michael Clayton, Defiance and News of the World – all Oscar-nominated – as well as Maleficent, all of The Hunger Games films, Water for Elephants, The Dark Knight (with Hans Zimmer), King Kong (2006), Blood Diamond, Batman Begins, Collateral, Snow Falling on Cedars, and Dave. Howard began his professional career in rock music, including a long association with Elton John, on tour and in the studio, as keyboardist and orchestrator. His work with Toto led to his first film credit, a cue he co-wrote for David Lynch’s 1984 film of Dune.
